


Phantom Pain

by draculard



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Child Neglect, F/M, Sibling Incest, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:41:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28014882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: At the age of eight, Thomas Sharpe wakes up on the mine shaft floor with blood dried on his temple and thinks he must be dead.
Relationships: Lucille Sharpe/Thomas Sharpe
Kudos: 8





	Phantom Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on tumblr, I'm draculard there too

When Thomas was eight years old, he sneaked into the mine shaft to watch his father and the men at work. The pits oozed crimson clay, distracting him, making him lose track of where his father was. This was almost a fatal mistake; he wasn’t permitted to leave the nursery. 

Father found him; Thomas remembered that much, and he remembered a flash of pain. When he woke hours later, the shaft was dark and empty, the stone floor cold against his cheek. Clay stained his clothes; a spot of blood, nothing too large or dramatic, had dried on his temple and briefly sealed his skin to the floor. When he lifted his head, there was a brief sting of tearing skin, but nothing more.

What had happened? As an adult, looking back on the events, they seemed so simple to Thomas. He’d been caught where he wasn’t supposed to be, and his father had struck him; when his head hit the floor, Thomas passed out and was left there when the day’s work was done. His father had perhaps hoped it would frighten him to wake alone and injured beneath the earth.

It hadn’t. It had felt _right_ ; like this was his true home, here in the darkness, among the earthworms and the insects and the ripe and ancient smell of clay. He pulled himself up, his fingers curled around the edge of a stone wall, and stared down into the pit of thick semi-liquid crimson below.

 _I’m dead,_ he thought. 

If things were simple for Thomas looking back as an adult, then as a child, they seemed even simpler. There was no explanation that fit better with the history of Allerdale Hall; if someone peeled back his skin, he thought they might find the story carved into his bones in the looped, slanting script of his mother.

Killed by his father in the mine shaft, he thought clinically; something in him warmed at this, like a cog in one of his automata fitting perfectly into place. With the heel of his palm, he rubbed the blood off his temple and into his hair. He was a ghost, he decided; his body was in the pits, and unless it resurfaced someday with the flesh gone and clay pooling in his bones, no one would ever see it again. 

Slowly, he walked outside, and his sense of unreality strengthened; it had been late fall when he went down into the mine shaft. The landscape was barren, the grass a dry brown, the colors warm and earthen. Now, as he emerged from beneath Allerdale Hall, he found fresh snow coating the ground — not yet stained red — and falling in a thick flurry from the sky. He wore no coat; the snow soaked through his shoes and numbed his feet; his nose burned from exposure to the cold wind and a deep, mind-splitting ache began in his ears and seemed to funnel downward to his throat and chest.

Ghosts couldn’t feel pain, he told himself — not without a body. But a mind could invent pain, he knew, if it reasonably expected to feel something. He turned his hands over, watched snowflakes fall into his palm and glisten on his skin. 

This would fade, he told himself — the illusion of feeling, the hallucination of snow melting on his skin. Perhaps by the time he crossed the yard and entered Allderdale Hall, his illusions would be gone.

And Father would never be able to beat him again.

And Mother would never be able to deny him food or warmth.

He turned toward the ancient oak door his ancestors had carved, but didn’t move forward. He let the snow pile up around his feet and speckle his hair, waiting for the sensation of pain and cold to fade. Gradually, the shivers stopped. Gradually, his nose and ears, his fingers and toes, all turned numb.

He’d never be hurt again, but he’d never again wake from a nightmare to find Lucille next to him in bed, her hands removing his sweat-soaked clothes, her naked body pressed against him for heat and contact and comfort until his heart rate finally slowed. He’d never feel her gentle touch against his thighs, or running down his stomach, or caressing him between his legs ever again. She would never bow his head to her breast, coax his mouth open, let him taste her — they would never again bathe together, their bodies wet and sliding against each other so pleasantly, her lips curled up in a smile.

He bit his lip until he felt pain again — until blood beaded where he’d clamped his teeth down on his own flesh and trickled down his chin.

Not dead, he realized, and with a sigh of mixed grief and fear and relief and joy, he walked into his darkened home.


End file.
